When Arren died one year ago, all our lives were shaken to the ground and it was unbelievable at first that this unique human we care about so much was not among us anymore. For me, it was the first time to experience a loss of a person so close to me in my life. At that time and in the process of coping with what had happened, a friend told me a beautiful metaphor, which has carried me through the past 12 months and I would like to share it with you.
When a person who is dear to you dies, a room is created for them in your heart. In this room, there are two things: On the wall, there is a button, which, when you press it causes this feeling of deep sadness and all this pain caused by this loved person not being around anymore takes hold of you; maybe you cry or whatever reaction this feeling elicits in you.

The other thing in the room is a huge ball. In the beginning of the coping process, this ball is as big as the room itself. It is so big that it constantly presses on that button, which causes you to be in this state of agony from missing this loved person.

Then, with the days and weeks passing by, this huge ball starts to shrink. As it gets smaller, it starts to move around in the room – in the beginning it only wobbles a bit but as life goes on and as you are slowly getting your feet back on the ground, it eventually gets smaller and smaller and starts to bounce around in the room – in the beginning the size of a basketball and then more like a rubber ball. And then sometimes, caused by whatever trigger in your life, it suddenly hits the button. Sometimes I am on my way to work like every day and then the thought of “What if Arren was still alive and would wait grumpy in the office, ready to insult me or answer every question I had” hits me out of nowhere.  

Somehow, these moments are getting rarer and we have accepted this new reality but I know that Arren’s room in my heart will never disappear and that there will always be times in my life when that ball hits that button and brings back the pain of missing Arren.
Now, while the last year without Arren was full of pain and missing him, it was also beautiful to see how all of us who he had brought together stuck together. It was one way of coping with this loss to draw strength from the extraordinary connections he established. Arren assembled the crew of a ship that somehow managed to steer through the open sea of academia without a captain. When Charlie, a former postdoc of our group who was with Arren from the beginning in Golm, visited last week because he couldn’t be here today, he said that we now seemed even more family-like compared to when Arren was still around. We somehow managed to support each other and keep up this extraordinary spirit of doing science, which he ignited in us including past members that take precious hours off their research time every week come to our sub group meetings to join our attempt to “replace” Arren with our swarm intelligence.